"Life's like forever becoming / But life's forever dealing in hurt," sang Lou Reed in "What's Good," a track from his 1992 album Magic and Loss. "Now life's like death without living / That's what life's like without you."
Many of the characters in Wednesday's Child, the new collection from Yiyun Li, can relate. The short stories in Li's book focus chiefly on people trying to put themselves together after some kind of loss, dealing with anguish that takes its time, rises from its dormancy at unexpected moments. As Li puts it: "True grief, beginning with disbelief and often ending elsewhere, was never too late."
